Sunday, February 11, 2007

Phuyllis Schlafly's Testimony on ERA Before AR Committee Transcribed

Schlafly Bio: Phyllis Schlafly was recently named one of the one hundred most important women of the twentieth century by the Ladies' Home Journal. She is a Constitutional lawyer and president of Eagle Forum which has chapters in every state. Her syndicated column appears in one hundred newspapers, her radio commentaries are heard daily on 460 stations, and her radio talk show, "Phyllis Schlafly Live" is heard weekly on forty stations. Schlafly is the author of twenty books and has testified before more than fifty Congresisonal and State Legislative committees.

The mother of six children, Mrs.Schlafly was the 1992 Illinois Mother of the Year. Friends and foes of Schlafly give her credit for galvanizing the grassroots movement that defeated ERA in its ten-year battle from 1972to 1982 when Presidents of both parties and the media had all endorsed it. [And all these feats were accomplished without an Equal Rights Amendment]

Transcription of Testimony:Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee: Thank you for allowing us to hear a non constituent. I have a special place in my heart for Arkansas because my husband's family owned the Mountain Valley Spring in Hot Springs from 1900 to 1987; and my husband brought me there on our honeymoon. I still drink Moutain Valley water, now owned by Arkansas people, and it is the finest water in the world. So thank you.

Now you have heard about an hour and half of advocacy for the Equal Rights Amendment; but I note that you didn't hear about one single law, federal or state, that discriminates against women that this amendment will remedy. I note that you didn't hear a single benefit that women will get out of the Equal Rights Amendment. This thing was debated for 10 years, from 1972 to 1982; and it was rejected by fifteen states outright and five more that rescinded and changed their mind.

I think the main reason it was rescinded and rejected was that it is a fraud. It pretends to help women, but it does nothing for women; and they are not able to show any benefit, any correction of law that the Equal Rights Amendment will do. You know that the amendment does not put women in the Constitution, and it does not put gender in the constitution. It puts sex in the Constitution. Now we are at the mercy of the judges. The Equal Rights Amendment does not say whether it is the sex you are or the sex you do. We leave all those decisions up to the judges.

Now in looking for what the Equal Rights Amendment will do, I look to the best top authority on that subject. And the leading lawyer in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment those years was Ruth Bader Ginsburg who is now on the United States Supreme Court. She wrote a book, a 230 page book, to tell exactly how the Equal Rights Amendment will affect federal law; and she is very explicit in it. I think there probably is no higher authority about what it will actually do.

[Schlafly proceeds to take the main points from Ginsburg's book as to what the ERA would do: See rest of article at this link